


Survival

by lunabee34 (Lorraine)



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Episode: s02e01 The Siege (3), F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-23
Updated: 2014-03-23
Packaged: 2018-01-16 16:16:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1353754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lorraine/pseuds/lunabee34
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During "The Siege," John and Elizabeth find some comfort with one another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Survival

Elizabeth doesn’t know what she expects to feel when John rematerializes in the gate room, but it certainly isn’t an overwhelming urge to touch him. She can’t believe that he’s alive and she has the most startling need to run her hands through his hair, to drag her thumb along the sharp angle of his jaw, to tuck herself under his arm and lay her palm flat against his heartbeat. Elizabeth hugs John instead, his arms tightening around her only after a pause, as if his first impulse is to push her away. That would hurt if Elizabeth didn’t sense it too, all the reasons she should maintain her distance instead of holding on so tightly that the bones in her fingers ache.

Elizabeth watches John leave, watches him run his hands along Atlantis’s walls as if he cannot believe they still stand. She breathes deeply and gets back to the business of reclaiming her city, _their_ city.

When everything is done, when the Wraith have gone and the cloak has dissolved, Elizabeth walks the expanse of Atlantis. Her floors are stained with blood and with the ichor of their enemies. They are stained with the consequences of her decisions and no matter that most of Elizabeth’s expedition still lives, the ones who do not haunt her. Parts of Atlantis are in rubble and Elizabeth wonders what secrets have been irrevocably lost, what vital information has been blasted into useless dust.

Elizabeth walks through long corridors, opening door after door, and on the edge of the city, she discovers the hollowed shell of a room that overlooks the wild and shining sea. She finds John there. He leans on the balcony, his spine a tired curve and his hands white knuckled on the railing.

“John,” she says. “I wanted. . .” Elizabeth stops. She isn’t sure what she wants, or rather she wants so many things that all of them together combine to form the impossible.

John looks at her and his face is naked, raw and open in a way Elizabeth has never seen before. “You’re in love with another man,” he says. Elizabeth stays silent because he isn’t wrong. “It wouldn’t be professional.” And then John smiles, desperate and aching and so very full of joy. “And we’re alive.”

He reaches for her then, his fingers gripping her hips and he kisses her so softly, so much more tenderly than she ever anticipated. John holds her still, their bodies touching only at the lips and the waist. He licks into her mouth for what seems like forever, until she is dazed and boneless, until the heat that starts between her legs flushes her cheeks and leaves her trembling.

John lays her down on the metal floor and carefully undresses her, as if she is a gift to be unwrapped. His hands are strong on Elizabeth’s body, the callus on his trigger finger rubbing against her nipples, against the soft swell of her belly. She comes apart, again and again, under those sure fingers, under that warm mouth. When John is finally moving in her, slowly, sweetly, like they have all the time in the galaxy, Elizabeth closes her eyes and sees the sky burning over Atlantis’s shields—beautiful, deadly, undulating flames--and she comes undone once more.


End file.
